


Love Lies Bleeding

by JoAsakura



Series: The Language of Memory [8]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 17:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7649332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You might as well just kill me and save yourselves the trouble." Jack says. "Because I've already died for Overwatch once. A second time is no big deal."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Lies Bleeding

The Morrison Family Farm, Indiana:

It was hot enough to make the devil cry, sun burning overhead in the cloudless blue. Jack shaded his eyes as best he could, the corn providing a little cover as he lay back on his jacket.

No wind to rustle the endless sea of green and gold, and it was silent, save for the buzz of insects and the distant rumble of the robotic combines. Jack despised the smell - the funk of earth and manure, the chemical tang of fertilisers, the thick, grassy-sweet of corn in the heat.

God, he hated Indiana.

"This where you used to take your boyfriends, cariño?" Gabriel straddled him, blessedly blotting out the sun, and pressed his hands into the dirt on either side of Jack's head. "Out into the corn?"

(He'd been sixteen that summer he'd first had that awkward, fumbling sex with Wendell Birks in the field, far enough away that the right Reverend Big Bob Morrison and his big white house might not have existed. (Little Bob Morrison, dead and buried two years before Jack had even been born, lay at the edge of it, an empty coffin for a lost soldier, trapped for eternity on the shore of an ocean of corn.)

When he was seventeen, that same Wendell Birks broke his leg in seven places and like so much in his life, Jack became the captain of his football team by default and a pretty face. Big Bob Morrison hadn't cared until his youngest had gotten drunk, stolen a car, and crashed it in Kentucky two days later.

When Jack realised the only way Big Bob Morrison would ever acknowledge him as something beyond a faulty replacement for Little Bob Morrison was by getting himself nearly killed, he marched himself to the nearest recruiting station. He wasn't sure if it was to get away, or get himself killed somewhere where they wouldn't put his coffin next to the corn.)

"I never told you that." Jack said, even as Gabriel kissed him and it tasted like a house fire and a wet basement. His lips smelled like burnt metal and the abyss, drowning out the scent of the corn.

"That's because you're not really here, baby. You're dying and the only other safe place in your head was Overwatch HQ, and that's nothing but rubble and rain." Gabriel stroked his face, as clouds rolled in across the endless horizon. "You have to be strong, Jackie." He said, dissolving in Jack's embrace as the first fat drops of rain began to fall from the sky.

Jack lay in the mud, blinking up at iron-dark clouds, rain lancing like razors on his burning face. His vision was doubled, his ears were ringing and when he tried to roll over, cough out the ash and blood in his mouth, to breathe over the tide of rainwater drowning him, his body refused to respond.

"I want you to understand, Commander Morrison, that I don't take any pleasure in this. It's not personal." A voice whispered over the church bells clanging in his ears. "But it is very rude for you to just check out when we're having a conversation. I like to think the old Jack Morrison would have been more attentive."

Jack blinked, eyes blurred and dim without his visor or glasses. Bright lights burned overhead, effectively blinding what little vision he did have. Water ran from his face and puddled on the floor beneath him. Concrete ground against his bare skin and his thoughts took too long to re-order themselves.

(Oh. That's right.) He thought at last, somehow vaguely hysterical yet numbly distant. (They're torturing me.)

The SEP had practically rebuilt it's subjects- the amount of damage Jack and Gabriel could take compared to many of their counterparts in the original Overwatch had been legendary. But Jack Morrison was on the fast track to sixty, and even the best bioengineering broke down eventually in the face of repeated injury and stress.

The man beside him, with the politician's voice in a neat dark suit, had a gold pin on his lapel, and Jack focused on that, over the screaming warnings his body was putting out. "This kinda feels personal on my end." He rasped, trying to will his eyes to make more sense of that pin.

"Your... Team... Killed a lot of good men and women today." The man paced. "We are just trying to bring you all back in from the cold, Commander. We're trying to contain the situation that your new.. Overwatch poses."

"Good men and women." Jack tried to laugh, but it only came out as a wheeze. "Like the ones you conditioned to betray us? Who killed themselves when Reaper tried to question them?"

The man got closer and grabbed Jack's face, thumb running hard over the scar that sliced across it, pressing into the one that contorted his lips. "You need to understand, Morrison. Overwatch got too big, too powerful, it had to be put down, and the only way to do that was cut off the heads. We had nothing against you or Commander Reyes, but you two would have always provided a united front, and then where would the world have been in a decade? A world of chaos under the rule of costumed freaks. You have a gorilla on your team, for heaven's sake."

Jack looked the man over, tanned and perfectly groomed. The pin was a golden V against the dark wool of his suit, and he smelled like expensive cologne. "Vishkar." Jack coughed, and the man let him go, retreating out backwards. "The new omnic crisis, Talon, the Security Council, all of it, just a way to bring the world under control." He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the pain in his limbs, the burning in his chest. "We were always your toys."

"There are powerful people in this world, Jack... Can I call you Jack? I feel like we've been bonding here today - who simply want safety and peace for all." The man said. "Just tell me where the rest of your team is, and you can rest, Soldier."

"You should just kill me and save yourself the trouble." There were heavy, booted footsteps approaching, dark shapes momentarily blotting out the lights. But Jack could hear the thunder over Geneva. He thought about waking up, but not really awake as he stumbled from the wreckage of HQ. His ears had been ringing, and all he could see were spots, screaming Gabriel's name into the storm and the smoke until his throat was raw. "Because I've already died for Overwatch once, a second time is no big deal."

~~

Former Deadlock Base, Arizona

Gabriel was nearly out of his mind. His body was thrumming, better fed than he had been in months, but it was nearly impossible to maintain a human form. The shapeless black mass, a horror show of blinking red eyes and gleaming teeth, surged and paced in what passed for the installation's comm centre.

"WHERE IS HE?!" One mouth roared and Winston turned on him, his own massive teeth bared as he bellowed at the monstrosity threatening him.

"That's enough, both of you!" Ana spat as she strode into the room, followed by her daughter and McCree. "Gabriel, pull yourself together. Winston, we need that data."

"ANA, THEY HAVE HIM." Three, maybe four mouths snapping, slightly out of synch, as Gabriel forced himself back into a cohesive form. "I swear to God, I am going to kill every one of them."

"Athena can predict a trajectory for Widowmaker's transport." Winston pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "But there are literally hundreds of possible locations for a base between Gibraltar and their potential end-of-range for a plane like that." He sighed. "We're trying to narrow it down based on other Talon activity and environmental factors."

"If we can talk to Lilith, she may know." Fareeha fidgeted with her helmet. She had not left Mercy's side since the healer had been consigned to the stasis tank. "She was communicating with Talon somehow."

"That may not be the best idea." McCree chewed on his cigar. "Hell, fer all we know, she could have passive tracking somehow."

Gabriel turned away as they discussed, voices fading to a dull ring in the background. For the longest time, he had not been sure of the truce between himself and Jack. Hadn't been sure of the "playing house" as Amelie had called it. But here he was, burning to death inside because the very enemy he'd tried to worm his way into had Jack.

He couldn't think over the ringing noise in his ears, and he was about to tear his mask off when he realised it was his external comm channel. He prayed it wasn't another mis-dial. He prayed it was Talon.

"Reaper." Widowmaker's voice was soft. "Reyes."

"Amelie." Gabriel said, and the conversation behind him quieted. "Where are you?"

"I'm sending you what coordinates I can. I do not know, exactly where we are. But there is little time, and they are probably expecting you." She said quickly. "I don't know how durable you super soldiers are, but I do not think he will last much longer."

"Let them expect me." Gabriel hissed as the coordinates scrolled across his HUD. "It's not going to do them any good."


End file.
